In an attempt to curb gambling addictions in Australia, the ban on gambling advertising has strengthened, but now, a new report in Australia about the country’s gambling industry provided stunning statistics about the losses that Australians incur while gambling. The report, compiled by the Queensland Government Statistician’s Office, covered all Australian territories and local governments and Australia’s gambling losses to be a whopping AU$32 billion in 2022-23.
According to the data released by the Queensland Government, Australia’s gambling losses had shot up drastically in recent years. In pre-COVID Australia the gambling losses stood at AU$25.6 billion; in 2022-23 it had shot up to AU$32 billion, an almost AU$7 billion rise.
The increase in overall gambling losses also translated to a higher per capita loss now as compared to 2021-22. In 2021-22 this number stood at AU$1,395 per capita; in 2022-23 it had gone up to AU$1,555 per capita, an almost 11.5% increase in a single year.
The numbers have left the Australian public stunned, especially given the Australian Prime Minister’s recent support for a partial ban on gambling ads. The step to ban gambling ads only partially was proposed to help limit the number of Australians affected by problem gambling.
The worrying data about the increase in gambling losses in Australia has caught the attention of the Alliance for Gambling Reform. Its CEO, Martin Thomas, said it was frustrating to see the steady increase in Australia’s gambling losses yearly.
He said the lack of adequate regulations to control gambling was one of the main contributors to the increase in gambling losses and the damage that families across Australia have had to face. This statement shows that Australia led all the other countries regarding losses incurred while gambling.
Martin also criticized the Government led by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese for its inability to take prompt and decisive action even though recommendations for the same had been made in a volatile report published over a year ago.
Alliance for Gambling Reform CEO Martin Thomas said, “Australians lose more to gambling than any other nation in the world because we have a grossly inadequate regulatory regime in which the gambling industry has been allowed to operate virtually unchecked, causing devastation to individuals, families and communities.”
The release of the new data indicating the increase in gambling losses has led to the Alliance for Gambling Reform asking for implementations of the recommendations put forward after the parliamentary inquiry on gambling in Australia.
The inquiry was chaired by the late MP for Labor, Peta Murphy and the results were presented to the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs on 28 June, 2023.
Ms. Murphy had at that time famously said, “Australians are the biggest losers in the world when it comes to gambling. We have a culture where sport and gambling are intrinsically linked. These behaviors are causing increasingly widespread and serious harm to individuals, families, and communities.”
In the report there were 31 recommendations made from a public health perspective to minimize the risk of gambling addiction and other related issues for Australians. Among them was the need for the Government of Australia to develop and then implement a comprehensive national strategy to minimize the possibility of gambling harm.
Other recommendations included a total ban on gambling ads, imposing a tax on gambling companies – like with New Zealand’s 12% tax on offshore gambling - introducing a national regulator and banning inducements and incentives.
The Government of Anthony Albanese, on the other hand, introduced a proposition to make the ban partial by banning gambling ads online, in children’s programming and in the middle of live broadcasting during sports and introducing limits in general programming.
Take a look at the gambling spending numbers, and one thing becomes clear: there has been an astronomical increase in money spent on activities related to gaming. On the other hand, the total amount spent on wagering for 2021-22 and also 2022-23 plateaued at around AU$9 billion.
A year-on-year analysis of the total money spent on gambling activities, on the other hand, paints a different picture and shows a definitive increase, from a total gambling spend of AU$19.3 billion in 2021-2022 to AU$23.1 billion in 2022-23, which is a massive increase of 19.6%.
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